How To Deal With The Foreign Accent

More than 600,000 documented immigrants arrive in the United States each year, with all levels of education, and from many nations. Often, immigrants struggle to speak and understand English. Customer service representatives must learn skills to help them communicate effectively with individuals with accents. Even regional American accents can be difficult for people from other part of the U.S. to understand.

In this Video On Demand, the Telephone Doctor provides five dos and don'ts for communicating with people with accents. Common communication errors are revealed, such as speaking loudly in an attempt to be better understood, or pretending to understand what is being said. Strategies to facilitate communication include politely explaining you are having difficulty understanding the person and asking the speaker to slow down the rate of speech. This video emphasizes the need to be kind and gentle with individuals who have accents, recognizing their humanity and the difficult situation they are experiencing.

Every employee needs to have the skills to assist callers who are difficult to understand. This video demonstrates how service personnel should adapt a compassionate and caring attitude when interacting with all customers, even those who are hard to understand.

   This course is in the Video On Demand format, to read about Video On Demand features click here.

Customer service representatives, retail employees, salespeople, telemarketers, call center employees, help desk employees

• Introduction
• Don't Pretend To Understand
• Don't Rush The Customer
• Don't Shout
• Don't Be Rude
• Learn From Experience
• Review

• Vulnerable Customers In 1 Minute
• Verbal Holding In 1 Minute
• Service Orientation In 1 Minute